NFDA Member Login

Member Benefits

Information for Your Families: Stop Junk Mail Addressed to Decedents

August 16, 2013

Many funeral homes provide the families they serve with a checklist to help them remember all of the various entities (banks, life insurance, VA, credit reporting agencies, etc.) they need to contact when closing out a loved one's business. You may wish to add the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to your firm's checklist. The DMA is an association for businesses that market goods and services to consumers by mail, email and phone.

Receiving solicitations for a loved one who has died can be painful. To assist families, the DMA created the "Deceased Do Not Contact List" (DDNC) for the sole purpose of removing names and addresses from their marketing lists.

When a family registers a name with DDNC, the person's name, address, phone number and e-mail address is placed on a special do not contact file. All DMA members are required to eliminate these individuals from their prospecting campaigns. The list is also available to non-members of DMA so that all marketers may take advantage of this service to eliminate names.

An updated DDNC file is distributed to DMA members at least once every three months. Therefore the number of commercial contacts from DMA members should begin to decrease within three months.